


and maybe even to float a little (above this difficult world)

by andibeth82



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), WandaVision (TV)
Genre: Avengers Family, Grief/Mourning, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-WandaVision
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:08:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29941497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: Wanda thought, at first, she’d go south. She needed to get away from Westview, away from Monica, away from her mistakes and her healing and her traumas. She thought she’d go south, reset herself with a newfound sense of calm and peace, with the time to acquaint herself with the magic she now felt coursing through her body at every second of the day.Instead, she found herself flying towards a quiet, solitary farmhouse in the middle of Waverly, Iowa.[a post WandaVision story.]
Relationships: Clint Barton & Wanda Maximoff, Clint Barton/Laura Barton
Comments: 17
Kudos: 83





	and maybe even to float a little (above this difficult world)

**Author's Note:**

> Uh, so...I've been having a really hard time getting fic done (my WIP folder is honest embarrassing) and suddenly WandaVision's finale happened and FEELINGS happened and I couldn't stop thinking of Wanda and Clint having grief talks and if she would tell anyone what happened and then all of a sudden it's 7,000 words later and here we are, back in the game. I've loved Clint and Wanda's relationship for a long, long time, so...this was coming whether I liked it or not.
> 
> Title from Mary Oliver.
> 
> _Still, what I want in my life  
>  is to be willing  
> to be dazzled--  
> to cast aside the weight of facts_
> 
> _and maybe even  
>  to float a little  
> above this difficult world_

There was a time, not that long ago, when Clint was one foot out the door with a backpack slung over his shoulder and half a sandwich stuck in his mouth, when it was 5:30 in the morning with the sun barely starting to rise over the trees that lined the idyllic landscape of the farm, when he stopped for five seconds to fumble for the device that was buzzing incessantly in his pants pocket.

“Ugh, _what_?” he asked as he pulled the phone out fluidly, not bothering to look at who might be calling given that there was only one person who _could_ be calling at this hour.

Natasha hesitated, her voice soft and sad.

“It’s Wanda.”

There was a time, not that long ago, when Clint walked to the car and dropped the backpack on the ground, turning to look at Laura, who was loading a cooler into the trunk of their minivan. He glanced at her then glanced up at the top floor of the house where he knew his three children were still sleeping soundly, and held out the phone.

“It’s Wanda.”

There was a time, not that long ago, when Clint failed to take his children waterskiing like he’d promised and ran off to New York, because even though part of him felt like the worst father in the world, just like so many years ago, he owed a debt and he had a responsibility and he knew he couldn’t ignore either one of those things.

So when Laura comes into the room where he’s knee-deep in sanding down yet another piece of wood for the new bookcase he’d promised Cooper he could help build and clears her throat quietly and says “it’s Wanda,” Clint drops his tools, rocks back on his heels, and gets up without asking any questions.

***

She thought, at first, she’d go south.

She needed to get away from Westview, away from Monica, away from her mistakes and her healing and her traumas. She thought she’d go south, reset herself with a newfound sense of calm and peace, with the time to acquaint herself with the magic she now felt coursing through her body at every second of the day.

Instead, she found herself flying towards a quiet, solitary farmhouse in the middle of Waverly, Iowa.

She’d stopped short of actually arriving on Clint’s doorstep in full uniform and had hidden herself in a patch of deserted wood, using her powers to outfit herself in a more casual display of jeans and a long-sleeved sweater. She knew she couldn’t show up like this -- not as the Scarlet Witch, not as someone who was a fully-fledged superhero whose powers and clothes rivaled those of Steve and Tony and even Natasha. But she also knew that she couldn’t distance herself from the world or become the next phase of herself without at least seeing him.

She sets off towards the farmhouse, each step a flash of memory that sears through her brain like a fleeting photograph.

_Vision. Billy. Tommy._

In a world where she had finally been able to accept her grief, move forward, understand why and how she had been able to grow through her pain, Clint and Laura were the only true family she had left.

Wanda smooths down her hair, takes a deep breath, and knocks on the door.

***

It reminds him of Natasha -- the way she’s sitting on his front porch, elbows resting on her knees, staring blankly and somewhat serenely at discarded toys left on the open lawn. Clint approaches hesitantly, not wanting to make too grand of an entrance when he’s not sure why she’s here, but Wanda turns around when he opens the door and smiles.

“Hey.”

She stands, reaching out for a hug, and Clint thinks her eyes look brighter despite the fact he can see inherent sadness still etched in her pupils. He smiles back, circling a hand around her waist.

“Hey.”

“The farm looks good.”

Clint heaves out a laugh as he pulls away, shoving his hands into his pockets and squinting at the sky. “Yeah,” he says with a nod. “We made it work after the Accords. Still have a lot to do now that the world isn’t actually ending, but it’s nice being off the grid for real.” He angles his head down, focusing on the way she’s scuffing her foot against the peeling porch wood, the way her arms are drawn in close by her side, and frowns.

“You okay?”

She doesn’t respond, so he waits, letting the silence build. Natasha had told him once that she’d seen herself in her, in the girl who was made to be so many things that she never asked for. He’d never asked her to elaborate on what she meant by that, because he’d never had to -- he’d never had to confirm that the reason his relationship with Wanda was a successful mentorship of trust and respect was because he’d already gone through the experience of learning, waiting, helping, and trusting with someone else so many years earlier.

“Yeah,” Wanda says after a moment. She straightens up and nods again. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Well, in that case.” Clint gestures towards the door, placing one hand on her shoulder. “Welcome home, Wanda.”

He lets her move ahead of him, giving her the space and time to react at her own speed, and follows her into the house where he knows Laura and the kids are sitting in the living room. Laura immediately gets up and hugs her, Cooper and Lila look up tentatively from their spaces on the floor and Wanda crouches down to high five them with a reassuring, soft smile. Nate waves enthusiastically, politely offering a half-eaten wafer cookie that’s dripping with saliva.

Clint takes it all in, watching with a little bit of pride and a lot of nostalgia as Wanda gently passes on the cookie present but accepts Laura’s offer of fresh coffee with almond milk.

“So,” Clint starts when they’re alone again in the living room, Laura having ushered the kids upstairs by somehow convincing them they could actually keep themselves occupied in a confined space, “you wanna tell me what you did?”

Wanda looks up in surprise, as if he’s managed to read her deepest, darkest secret. She narrows her eyes. “What makes you think I did anything?”

Clint grins and taps the side of his forehead with two fingers. “Dad vibes, Wanda. You’re either here because you want to talk about something or because you want Laura’s cooking. Honestly, I wouldn’t blame you for the latter. Also, I’m pretty sure I’m the closest thing you have to family, so I get to question you about your decision making.”

Wanda laughs quietly and looks down at her hands, which Clint notices are holding the coffee cup a little too tightly. “I’d say you’d never believe me if I told you, but --”

“But, aliens and monsters and magic, yadda yadda yadda,” he interrupts waving his hand around. When Wanda gives him a curious look, he shrugs. “It’s something Nat said to me once after Loki happened. Just, you know...a reminder that no one expected any of this otherworldly shit.”

“Otherworldly shit,” Wanda echoes, her eyes glazing over. Before Clint can say anything, she turns, lifting one leg onto the couch and bending it under her thigh. “Did you know what I could do when you met me?”

“I --” Clint stops, unsure of how to answer. “Did I know you were some powerful mutant? Kind of. Did I know that you could level a purple alien god with some insane energy? _Definitely_ not.”

Wanda rolls her eyes, giving him a look. “You know what I mean, Clint.”

Clint moves his mouth around, trying to find the right words to respond. “I knew you were someone who needed help understanding things about yourself that maybe you’d never been taught,” he says finally. “I knew that even when you were doing bad things, it wasn’t because you were a bad person.”

Wanda hums under her breath. “Like Natasha?”

Clint sighs and leans back on the couch, feeling tired and older than he has in awhile. “Yeah, I guess like Natasha.” He inclines his head, rolling it to the side so he can see her face more clearly. “So I’ll ask you again, Wanda -- what’s going on?”

***

Wanda doesn’t tell him about Westview during their coffee chat. She doesn’t tell him about Westview while she’s playing with Lila and Cooper, reacquainting herself with children who saw her briefly a month ago and only remember her from sporadic visits six years ago when she was still timid and shy and spoke with a heavy Sokovian accent. She doesn’t tell him about Westview over dinner, over spaghetti and homemade meatballs and wistful looks at Nate when he does things that remind her so plainly of Pietro.

She only tells him about Westview when they’re alone again, when they’re sitting in the barn underneath a canopy of stars that peak through the open slats in the roof, cold air dipping between the crevices and raising goosebumps on his skin, when she turns to him and draws herself up, placing her chin on curled knees, and says, “I made a town.”

“You made --” Clint stops. “What do you mean, you made a town?”

Wanda reaches into her coat pocket, withdrawing the Westview deed. He takes it from her fingers, studying its contents. She watches him blink several times, watches the way his body sags and then straightens as if he realizes too late he needs to keep his resolve, for both of their sakes.

“Vision did this? When?”

Wanda shrugs. “I don’t know,” she admits. “I think during or before Scotland. I think -- before everything happened, he was going to tell me about this. About our future. But then…” She trails off. “None of it was supposed to be this way.”

“No,” Clint says gruffly, shoving the paper back at her. Wanda’s chest aches as his shared pain seeps through her skin, the hurt and grief and guilt that she can see and feel him carrying. “So, what? Vision bought you a house in a town and you made one up?”

“Not...exactly,” Wanda hedges. “Westview existed. I mean, it does exist. It’s where Vision bought the land that he planned for us to settle in. It’s quiet there.” She pauses, thinking of Dottie, of Herb and Mrs. Hart. “It’s peaceful.”

_Until it wasn’t peaceful anymore. Until I made everyone resent me for letting my grief get to be too much. Until I made mistakes._

“I get the feeling there’s something else you’re not telling me,” Clint says in the silence. Wanda bites down on her lip and showers harmless red sparks towards the sky. It reminds her of when she would come to the farm on weekends off, when Natasha encouraged her to get away from the motonoy of Avengers Compound and, in her own words, “live a little more normally.”

“I was controlling it. Westview, I mean. The people in town, I made them a part of this perfect little life that I wanted for myself -- that I was in denial of accepting I’d lost, because I couldn’t see outside my grief. It was perfect, for awhile.” She stops, her mind settling on the moments before everything went to hell, smiles from the twins and Vision’s soft kisses and silly Halloween costumes. “It really was. Me and Vision...we were happy. There was a time when I thought I could stay there forever.”

“You and Vision,” Clint repeats skeptically. “Wanda, Vision’s _dead_.”

“I know,” Wanda says, her breath feeling tight in her chest. She doesn’t feel like she can get into the rest of it tonight -- SWORD, SWORD, Hayward, her breakdown. She had gone through her grief and now she had to parcel her confessions out, one at a time, in a way that was conducive to helping her heal. “But for awhile, he wasn’t anymore.”

Clint’s quiet for a long time. Wanda knows that it’s not because he’s judging, because even if he _was_ , he’d never overstep so far as to treat her like she was one of his children. In the first iterations of their relationship, she’d looked to him as a big brother she never had, especially in the wake of Pietro’s death. But aside from the Accords, when he’d dragged her out of Avengers Compound and harshly told her to get off her ass, he’d never treated her like a scared, innocent child. He’d never treated her like he was better because he was older, and more learned, and more experienced.

But she needed to tell him. She knew she couldn’t disappear and restart her life without lifting some of the burden of the past month, she _needed_ someone who knew her to know, to understand. And after everything -- after Pietro, after Lagos, after the Accords, after the Raft, after Thanos -- she owed him honesty.

She owed him that much.

Because if anyone was going to understand going off the grid and taking it too far when they’d lost everything, if anyone was going to understand hurting people when you weren’t thinking about the consequences of your grief, it was going to be Clint Barton.

“So you made a town.”

Wanda shakes her head. “I didn’t mean to.”

“And you brought back Vision.”

“I recreated Vision,” Wanda corrects.

Clint rubs his eyes with the aid of a heavily tattooed arm. “Jesus Christ, Wanda.”

She’s not sure if the response is because when they last saw each other she was throwing balls of fire from her hands, not creating actual alternate realities and people -- or if it’s because he’s actually processing how over the top this whole thing is.

“I promise I’ll tell you the whole story,” Wanda says firmly. “All of it. But I needed…” She swallows hard. “No one knows, but I needed you to know.”

Clint turns to look at her. As they meet each other’s eyes, she can see that there’s definitely a bit of judgement in his gaze, but there’s also softness, and maybe a little bit of tiredness.

“Why?”

Wanda smiles sadly. “Because I know you did some bad things when you were grieving, too. And I know that doesn’t make either of us the villains of our story.”

***

Clint doesn’t sleep.

He walks Wanda back to the house under the guise of a soft velvet sky, he closes the door to the guest bedroom, and he climbs into bed with Laura, pulling her body close. He tries to make himself relax and tries to let the tiredness he knows he’s carrying envelope his body, but nothing comes.

When Laura finally sits up in bed, her internal alarm clock waking her at 5:30 and well before the sun and roosters that crow from the next farm over, he’s already sitting on the overstuffed chair by the desk, staring blankly out the window at the approaching dawn.

“Hey,” Laura says softly, letting a hand drop onto his shoulder. He flinches, but doesn’t turn around. “What’s up?”

Her voice is raspy, tired from sleep and, Clint surmises, from yelling at three children who every day seem to give a new meaning to the word _exhausting_. Clint leans back and falls comfortably against her torso, a trust fall they’ve done together more times than he can count.

“Just thinking.”

“Hmmm.” Laura clears her throat skeptically. “Just thinking at five in the morning?”

Clint closes his eyes, his insides aching with pain from holding his emotions back. He considers the words before he speaks them out loud, measured and calm in the safety of the darkness.

“Do you think you’ll ever forgive me?”

“For what?” Laura asks, sounding surprised. Clint steels his mind against the sound of a sword slashing open soft flesh.

“For Ronin.”

“Clint.” Laura presses closer, her arm moving down his front. She pauses before she speaks again, a delicate, purposeful hesitation. “We talked about this. I told you that I forgave you.”

“You said it,” Clint acknowledges. “But Laura...it wasn’t just disappearing for five years to run around the world. I did bad things. A lot of them. I...I don’t see how any of that is forgivable.”

“You did do bad things,” Laura replies carefully. There’s a hint of danger to her voice, one that tells her even if she’s okay, even if _they’re_ okay, the whole situation of it all might not be okay for a very long time. “But I know you did those things because you were grieving.”

“But it was still _me_ ,” Clint argues, standing up and rubbing his eyes until they burn. He leans forward, bracing himself against the window. “It wasn’t like Loki, where I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. It wasn’t like Wanda --” He stops, unsure about whether or not he should go any further. It technically wasn’t Laura’s place to know Wanda’s trauma and her own grief. On the other hand, he knows that if she thought he _wasn’t_ going to share her confessions with the person who had, for all intents and purposes, been a sister and a mother to her for so many years, she wouldn’t have told him anything in the first place.

“She did things,” Clint continues, his voice a gruff murmur in the dark. “She did things that hurt people but she didn’t mean to do it. I did.”

Laura circles an arm around his waist, moving closer to him. “The Clint Barton I know gets angry,” she starts quietly. “He sometimes does things he regrets. And he had a job for a long time where he did have to kill people, if that’s what it took. But he also knew when to make choices. The _right_ choices.” She wraps her arms around his waist and Clint doesn’t have to ask what she’s referring to when she says _the right choices_. “Grief makes you do things....trauma makes you do things. How many times did you tell Natasha that trauma isn’t a curse, that it’s just a key to unlock a part of you that you don’t have control over?”

Clint sighs against the cold glass. “Too many times,” he says, thinking of Natasha, of her face as she dangled in front of him off a seventy-foot cliff in space, of her last words to him with a wink and a hopeful smile on the quantum platform -- see you in a minute.

_See you in a minute._

“I just --” He falters, trying to get the words out. “I just need to know that I didn’t fuck something up.”

Laura puts her chin on his shoulder, staring at the sun edging over the trees. “You didn’t fuck something up.”

“But I should have,” Clint says miserably. “I mean, by all accounts, you should hate me.”

“And by all accounts, you shouldn’t have come home,” Laura reminds him, the tone of her voice a little sharper than he knows she means it to be. “I _know_ you did bad things, okay? But can you let me have this? Can you let me have this one allowance of letting you get away with your grief spiral, however bad it was, because you almost didn’t come _home_?”

Clint nods, not trusting his voice. Outside, as the sky lightens, his reflection in the glass becomes clearer, and he sees himself eight years ago -- lying on a cold table with Natasha’s knowing eyes trailing his every flinch, Helen Cho fixing his body with magic and science and telling him he would be made of him.

_You will be made of you, Mr. Barton._

In that moment, he wished privately that could be changed, that he could be made of something more, something better, because then maybe he wouldn’t feel so damn human all the time.

***

The one thing Wanda has always loved and always appreciated about being at the Barton farm is its aura of comfort.

Natasha talked about it sometimes. When Wanda started visiting Clint’s family regularly, Natasha started opening up about how much time she’d spent at his house over the years -- and Wanda didn’t have to press her to know that her visits weren’t exactly public knowledge to everyone else on the team. She often joked about the fact that Laura might be a better superhero than the Avengers.

“She’s seen so much,” Natasha said over a long lunch one day in the middle of training. “But I guess when your husband walks through the door with a bleeding leg every other week or decides to bring strange people into the house, you kind of just learn how to roll with the punches.”

Wanda, for her part, appreciated how Laura never let her feel like she was overstepping her bounds or permissions as a guest while imparting a very clear “this is my home and I run it the way I want” attitude that never felt particularly harsh. During Wanda’s first visit, three weeks after Pietro’s death, she tiptoed around child conversations and spent most of her time outside in the yard or in the guest bedroom, writing in her diary and watching old sitcoms. Clint cornered her on the way to the bathroom one afternoon, crossing his arms and looking confused.

“Why the heck are you hiding up here?”

Wanda had been surprised at the callout, figuring that staying out of his family’s personal space was what she was expected to do. “Where should I be hiding?”

Clint had frowned, then looked over her shoulder towards the tv, which was frozen on an image of Jan Brady looking pouty. He’d smiled.

“Laura loves those old sitcoms. She watches them with Cooper all the time. She’d probably get a kick out of watching with you if you ever wanted a buddy.”

It was a subtle reassurance that, if she wanted to, she could choose to blend into the safe, personal domestic life Clint had built for himself, despite the fact she didn’t know anything about his family or his history. After becoming more in tune with how the house was run, with how Laura responded to certain things, with how Clint behaved when not being a superhero on display for the world, she hadn’t had to wonder if this wasn’t the first time they’d adapted to becoming close to someone unexpectedly.

By the time Wanda makes it downstairs for breakfast, the table bears all the evidence of the aftermath of war -- crumbs littering the vacant chairs and empty glasses of orange juice pushed haphazardly into a messy pyramid. Laura catches her eye as she approaches the kitchen and winks.

“Don’t let the mess fool you,” she says, nodding towards the table. “There’s still plenty of pancakes these demons didn’t devour. We learned the hard way to never skimp when it comes to food.”

Wanda smiles against a rumbling stomach and walks over to the coffee machine, where Laura has left out a sculpted owl mug for her use. “Where is everyone?” she asks as she pours from the carafe, noticing for the first time the silence that had allowed her to sleep long past her usual wake-up.

“Oh.” Laura takes a plate of pancakes out of the microwave, where she’s been warming them. “Clint took the kids to run a few errands. It was my subtle way of getting them out of the house for a few hours and getting my to-do list taken care of.”

Wanda laughs as she sips her coffee, sending ripples into the liquid. “Natasha was right,” she says, before you can stop herself. She cringes as the words leave her mouth; she still isn’t sure whether or not it’s safe to bring up Natasha with her death still so freshly prominent in everyone’s minds. But Laura simply looks curious and a little interested.

“Right about what?”

“You,” Wanda says simply. “Being a superhero.”

Laura’s face takes on a pensive look as she puts the plate on the table and she shakes her head. “Not a superhero, no,” she says thoughtfully. “Just someone who’s had a lot of experience adapting. And who learned from someone I loved not to always keep your walls up.” She pauses as Wanda sits down at the table and when she speaks again, her voice is soft.

“I heard,” she says. “About what you did.”

“Which part?” Wanda asks sarcastically, digging her knife a little too forcefully into her pancake. “The part where I made a town out of my own grief or the part where I resurrected my dead boyfriend and made him play out comfort sitcoms with me?”

“The latter,” Laura confirms, sitting down in the chair next to her. “And the former.”

“Well then, you know it all,” Wanda snaps, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. Laura looks sad, but not offended at her tone.

“I know what I know,” she agrees. “But I thought maybe you’d want to talk about it to someone who’s been on the other side of what you’re feeling.”

"Clint didn’t cause lasting damage to people because he couldn’t control his grief. Or his powers,” Wanda pointed out.

“Clint murdered people,” Laura responds, and her voice is so matter-of-fact and accepting that it catches Wanda off guard. “I didn’t understand it, at first. I tried to, but I couldn’t get my head around it. All those people...innocent people. Clint doesn’t do stuff like that.”

Wanda puts down her fork and chews slowly, swallowing both pancake batter and an emotional lump. “Grief does things to you,” she says sadly. “You’re incapable of seeing things in a rational way, so you hurt people. Not intentionally. But you do.”

“I know,” Laura says, leaning forward on her elbows. She sighs. “When I came back, I didn’t know what had happened. Everything was the same...except Clint was gone. And then I called him, and he told me he was okay, but -- the phone cut out and I still don’t really know what happened.” She looks around, as if needing to take in the space around her, a mental reminder of what she’d lost and gotten back. “What I did know was that I had three very confused children who needed me to step up. I had to push my grief aside until Clint came home, until I figured out the whole story...until I knew about Natasha.”

“Then you’re a better person than me,” Wanda admits. “I tried to block out my grief for years, and it resulted in so much denial that I just ended up hurting innocent people the same way he did.”

“You would think,” Laura says, as if explaining how to peel a potato and not referencing an impending mental breakdown. “But one night, when the kids were asleep, I told Clint that I wished he’d never joined SHIELD -- that I wished I had a different life. I didn’t mean it, and I know I’d never trade my marriage for anything. I’m so proud of him. But I know that in that moment, I hurt him.”

Wanda picks up her coffee, swirling the liquid around in the deep mug. “I was in Wakanda,” she says, her eyes filling with tears. “I disappeared next to his body, then I came back and he wasn’t there at all. I went to find him and --” She stops, fighting off memories of a dismantled mess of wires and broken pieces of metal, the things that made up a machine and not the person she had learned to love. “I just wanted to give him a funeral. I couldn’t even have closure.”

“And what you did -- did it give you closure?” Laura asks smartly, in a voice that very much sounds like she’s asking one of her children if an answer to a math problem makes sense. Wanda blinks away her tears looks around the kitchen, taking everything in -- the way the sun filters through the half-open blinds, the new decorations of bird carvings etched into the beams above the kitchen, the mess of bills piling up on the small desk in the corner, half-hidden by Laura’s pink cardigan and two small pairs of sneakers. She thinks of Westview, of the home she created for herself, of the softness she felt inside the walls when the twins were eating breakfast or when Vision was cuddling with her on the couch.

“Yes,” Wanda says, because she knows it’s true. “I think it did.”

***

“I know you’re in there.”

Clint grunts, half because he can’t answer with his teeth clamped down on a wrench and half because he really doesn’t want to inhale more grease than he knows he already has. He wheels himself out from underneath the truck, squinting up at Wanda, who gives him a knowing smile.

“Good afternoon to you too,” he grumbles after sitting up and putting the wrench aside, leaving his mouth free to respond. “I wasn’t exactly trying to hide, you know.”

“I know,” Wanda says lightly. “I’m taking a walk, if you wanted to come.”

“Now?” Clint whines, knowing how pathetic he sounds. His to-do list clicks in his brain; he knows he still has to finish replacing one of the gears in the truck and he has to make sure he had the right amount of materials so Nathaniel can finish his paper mache globe for his school project and he told Laura he’d peel carrots before dinner.

“You need a break,” Wanda says pointedly. “Laura said there’s more than enough paper mache so you don’t have to worry, and I think you can peel carrots in ten minutes.” When Clint glares at her, she holds up her hands in mock surrender. “I swear, I didn’t do anything to your mind.”

“I believe it,” Clint mutters, pushing himself up and wiping his hands on his pants. “Short walk, yeah?”

Wanda nods, falling into step beside him. As they start to move, Clint realizes he’s glad for the mandated break. Even though the chores he was doing usually helped him to relax, he hadn’t realized how much tension he’d been carrying. His shoulders and legs ache as he works movement back into them while they leave the farm behind, heading down the dirt path that leads to the main road.

“So, you wanna tell me more about how you made a town out of thin air and what tricks you’ve been learning over the past year that I’ve been unaware of?” Clint asks lightly when they’ve walked a fair distance from the farm.

“No,” Wanda says levelly. “I want to talk about Natasha.”

Clint freezes in place, all the tension his body has started to release piling back on like concrete. “ _Why?_ ”

“Because I know we haven’t talked about it,” Wanda responds. Clint grits his teeth together, feeling his jaw ache.

“We talked about it,” he grinds out shortly. “At the funeral.”

“Not enough,” Wanda volleys back. “If it was enough, I wouldn’t have gone to SWORD and tried to take Vision’s body from their possession because I wanted to give him closure. And I wouldn’t have driven to Westview and had a breakdown that caused an entire alternate reality.”

“You --” Clint feels his eyes widen and he throws up his hands. “Shit, Wanda, what the _fuck_? And who the hell is SWORD?”

“Not important,” Wanda says, starting to walk again. “Not right now, anyway.” She walks a few more steps and then stops, turning to face him fully. Despite his anger and frustration, Clint finds himself marveling at how competent and in control she looks, and can’t help but think of how far she’s come since Sokovia.

“Clint, Westview was my fault,” Wanda argues. “It took me a long time to own that, to realize it...to accept it. But Vormir wasn’t your fault. You can’t own Natasha’s death.”

“I can’t -- are you serious?” Clint asks, feeling his nerves fray. “Wanda, you weren’t _there_! _None_ of you were there! You were either dead or dusted or in some other time period and it was just me and her and a guy with a goddamn red skull who gave us some kind of sick deal! And it was supposed to be me, it was going to be me!”

“But it wasn’t you,” Wanda reminds him, stepping forward. “And that was Natasha’s decision to make. It wasn’t because of those five years, and it wasn’t because you did something wrong on that cliff.”

“Bullshit,” Clint spits back, fighting back the tears he wants to unleash. “Do you think I even checked in on her? Do you think I even gave a damn about how she was doing while I was running around killing people because I was _sad_?”

“And how does that make her sacrifice _your_ fault?” Wanda demands. “The people in Westview told me my grief was poisoning them, that I was the one making them upset and causing them pain. It hurt to hear, but I know now that grief doesn’t define you. It doesn’t define _us_! We do what we have to do to survive and sometimes we make mistakes, but that doesn’t make us bad people.”

“So your answer to surviving is to mind control random people and bring your boyfriend back from the dead for your own sake of happy denial?”

He knows he’s gone too far. Even if Wanda’s eyes hadn’t instantly turned red, even if she hadn’t raised her hands and produced two large energy balls that glowed dangerously large, he still would’ve known he’d gone too far. Wanda advances towards him; he can practically feel the heat of her powers against his skin but he holds his ground, just as he once trusted her to fling a knife at his head and recognize that she had the willpower to stop it before she mortally wounded him.

“You’d really use those on me?”

“Maybe,” Wanda says flatly, and Clint can tell she’s at least half serious. “You put an arrow in my head, remember?”

Clint snorts out a laugh and feels the pulsating headache of anger subside slightly. “I know I did.” He takes a deep, long breath, letting the clear Midwestern air settle in his lungs. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Wanda stays defensive, holding her stance, until she finally drops her hands, the red energy disappearing from her body.

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

Clint sighs, rubbing the back of his sunburned neck with the inside of his palm. “Is this where you tell me grief makes you do shitty things, like be a bitch to someone about their mental health?”

Wanda rolls her eyes. “No. This is where I tell you that not everyone has the power to bring their soulmate back to life.”

“Huh?”

Wanda shrugs, tilting her head to the sky. She folds her arms over her chest. “It’s something SWORD said to me when I went to find Vision. They were wrong, though. I did have the power to do that. It didn’t mean it was the _right_ thing to do, though.”

Clint lets the silence settle between them, as if the quiet air can mend the friction of their argument. “You said SWORD took Vision.”

“They did,” Wanda replies. “But he wasn’t Vision. He was…” She looks up and meets his eyes, and in the same way that Clint instantly saw a mature, competent woman holding her own with her powers, he instantly sees the anxious girl who he’d once saved from hiding in the rubble of her own town. “He was a machine. A machine they’d taken apart and were studying like a science project. I just wanted a funeral. I wanted to say goodbye. I wanted…”

Clint arches his neck back, staring up at the bright, blue sky.

“You wanted what I wanted,” he says hoarsely. “A second chance.”

“You got a second chance,” Wanda reminds him.

“With my family,” Clint acknowledges, letting the wind carry away his voice. “But not with Natasha.”

He turns, not waiting to see if Wanda will follow, only starting to walk a little faster when he hears the confirmation of footsteps in the wake of his own.

***

Before he said it, before he told her about it, she knew it was going to be here. She knew this place existed, that it was only a matter of time before he showed it to her -- whether that was now or in another five years.

“I had to do something,” Clint says by way of explanation after they’ve turned off the dirt path and spiraled down another long road, back in the direction of the farm but a little further out. “It’s not exactly a museum landmark, though.”

Wanda crouches down in front of the large tree, dragging her fingers against the bark. There are small letters etched into the wood, light enough that she knows she’d miss them if she wasn’t intently looking and underneath, near the base of the tree, a small mound of dirt houses a collection of red flowers that are starting to peek through the ground.

“I figured, you know...it’s spy-like,” Clint continues in the silence, as if he’s trying to offer an explanation that Wanda knows he doesn’t have to give. “We gave her a funeral -- well, what we could give of a funeral. The kids wanted something more substantial. But I mean, when you don’t have a body --”

“You do the best you can,” Wanda finishes, standing up and looking at him. He’s leaning against another tree, his arms shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans, and his tattoo sleeve bulges against his straining muscles. “You improvise.”

“Yeah.” Clint nods towards the tree. “Can’t say my improvising was as creative as yours, but at least it’s something, you know? And I can come here and have my time alone when I want to see her.”

Wanda looks at the ground again. She knows there’s an exceedingly short list of people who would understand this her loss, her grief, the reasons behind why she did what she did, what she experienced and how it weighed on her. Clint was one.

Natasha would have been another.

“Would you have done it?” Wanda asks after a long moment, not knowing why she’s asking if she already knows the answer. “If it was Nat?”

“Yeah,” Clint replies instantly. He forces out a laugh, dragging a hand through unkempt hair. “I would have done it in five seconds. She’d hate me for it, though.”

Wanda smiles sadly. “Vision hated me,” she says softly. “Kind of. He forgave me for everything, in the end.”

“Isn’t that love?” When Wanda inclines her head in his direction, he shrugs. “I mean, doing something that you think is in your best interest because you care so much about someone else, you’d do anything to keep them safe?”

“It’s a kind of love,” Wanda agrees. “I thought what I needed was the life I never had a chance to have, before it was taken from me. And I did need it.” She thinks of Tommy and Billy, of how it felt to have her own small corner of the world that she was never allowed to have by the world. “But then I realized that maybe you need to let things go in order to move on. Maybe some things are meant to come into your life for the moment, to help you grow, but they aren’t meant to be forever.”

“Family,” Clint says automatically, putting his arm around her and drawing her close. “Family is forever.”

Wanda knows that somewhere, there’s a cabin waiting for her. She can already see it in her mind -- a small house in the mountains, far away from the world, a location surrounded by trees and greenery. She knows that somewhere, there’s a new life waiting for her -- a life she’s carried around with her for years but that she’s only just beginning to understand how to control. A life where she’s more than Wanda Maximoff, more than the orphan who lost her parents, more than the girl who had powers. A life that’s been nurtured and pushed into existence by those who loved her and believed in her, by Pietro, by Clint, by Laura, by Natasha, by the Avengers, by Vision.

Wanda leans into Clint’s hold, takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes.

“Yes, it is.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr (I'm still there, I promise!): @isjustprogress.


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